E Ink smart screen puts a newspaper on your wall | Hacker News Reader

E Ink smart screen puts a newspaper on your wall

onezero.medium.com

597 pointshiharryhere300 comments

This is just gorgeous and begs the question: what is wrong with e-ink and their non-marketing of their technology?

You can get LCDs in almost any form and size for very little money, but e-ink displays are still rare and expensive. I love my kindle (ironically even Amazon seems to be very slow in enhancing it), but I would love larger e-ink screens and display devices. Like with good old black and white displays, there is zero penalty for running them 24/7. The newspaper is a great implemantation of this, but I also would like to have a large e-ink display for displaying b/w photographs.

And of course, a reader, large enough to cover the area of an open book (so almost A3) would be a dream. Displaying a double-page of any print at 100% would make for the ultimate e-reading experience. Would be the ideal accessory to any programmers desk, but also for any scientist.

So the big question is: why does all of this not exist?

Because worse is better and LCDs and OLED dominate the display market.

People rather have a backlit display in a small form factor with a higher refresh rate than reading on an eink display.

My Phone / Tablet allows me to read and also watch movies in color but eink can't do that.

On that matter, is there any reason why I can’t find high-resolution monochrome non-backlit TFT matrices?

I.e. how are they worse than rink?

If you've never had a screen with a broken backlight it might not be obvious, but without the light a normal TFT display is basically unreadable except in very specific orientations due to the way the layers are sandwiched. You're probably looking for what's referred to as "transparent LCD", which I think still are not very nice to look at (Google has plenty of example pictures).

What is better, a hammer or a screw driver?

You can use a hammer to make a screw driver.

I often use a screw driver to hammer things.

"raises the question", not "begs". That means something else.

http://begthequestion.info

Never knew that. Today I learned something!

You're doing God's work. That site is hilarious.

Thanks for the information, I am a non-native speaker and only picked up the expression from the net. I have to admit though, that I fail to understand the reasoning on that page other than "it means something different".

Don't sweat it, it's a common error made by native speakers too, myself included until I learned about it. :)

It's really not an error anymore because it's been in common usage for years.

Let them be. If we didn't have prescriptivists, everything would literally mean nothing.

And if that was the common usage that people agreed on and understood, that would be perfectly fine. It's literally how language works!

People who complain about this are mostly just being preciously prescriptivist, and they typically do a shockingly poor job of explaining the issue.

To "beg the question", canonically, is to argue in a way that only makes sense if whatever you're arguing to support is true. It's a difficult sort of fallacy to provide examples for because it's quite rare, so most examples you see tend to be constructed for the sake of complaining about the supposed misuse of the phrase "beg the question", and so either trivial or incomprehensible or both.

Too, the phrase "beg the question" itself relies on a rather outmoded sense of the word "beg", whose rarity in modern usage makes the prescribed meaning of the phrase very difficult to intuit compared to the supposedly incorrect one.

All of which begs the question: why should anyone care what complaints linguistic prescriptivists make in the case of this phrase, any more than in the case of any other?

Someone mistranslated Latin into English 300 years ago and now some nerds are mad that people are misinterpreting the mistranslation. Best to just ignore the whole thing by never writing "begging the question." Always write either "raising the question" or "circular reasoning" depending on what you mean.

It's somewhat like the phrase "it beggars belief" - it means that 'belief' is left in a very poor condition, begging alms ...

This is my only grammatical pet peeve, so thanks for the link. I'll be posting that around some. :)

It's daft wrong-headed prescriptivism contrary to all common sense and usage. It just screams "I don't care about actual language, just silly pedantry".

The reason it's my pet peeve is because I use "begging the question" in its correct form all the time to describe an otherwise difficult concept. Once you put a name on something, it's much easier to understand and talk about. But when the name is confused with a much simpler concept "raising the question", it kills the original meaning so I have to explain the concept in far more words. For example, "The man is assuming a fact for granted and using a fact that follows in order to prove the original fact." is much more wordy than saying "The man is begging the question."

Nah. "Beg the question" is used as a term of art in academia to mean one thing, but it is also used in common parlance to mean something else.

See also 'fruit', and whether or not tomatoes are displayed in the vegetable aisle.

Botanically it's a fruit. Culinary its uses are more aligned with those of a vegetable.

Fruits and vegetables aren't opposite things. Fruit is a term of art in botany, but it's lay usage is fairly close to that. The word vegetable can be fairly broad to include almost any edible part of a plant. This is why I'm a vegetarian and not a vegetarian and fruitarian.

Culinary vegetable is often used as a "soft opposite" of fruit because they often require different preparations and uses.

The interesting thing about "begs the question" is that it's a matter of who is doing the begging (asking). Classically your answer is asking for your premise, so you're sort of working backwards and likely circularly. In modern usage, the answer is asking for more research.

Sometimes people use it to mean dodging a question, which I'm not quite sure why and would consider wrong usage.

Off topic, but well, as the saying goes, "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

"You need better pickup lines. An introduction like that begs a slap in the face."

"Stay away from that switch! Running the factory lights at night begs a German bomb right on top of us."

"I beg your pardon?"

"That's an interesting link, but it begs the question, 'why does an archaic idiom invalidate the plain meaning of a phrase?'"

The English language is well prepared to deal with ambiguities. There are countless words and phrases with multiple meanings. This one is not even confusing! One is always followed by the question it raises, which makes it quite obvious what they meant.

Improper user of "begs the question" is like nails on chalkboard for me. Still, this has to be the best counterargument I've read. Well done.

This is one of those cases where the popular (initially incorrect) use of the word has far outstripped the one this link mentions.

It's like the word 'literally' (whose bastardization is both far more egregious and hilarious)

Even Google now reflects the 'incorrect' use of beg as the primary meaning of it:

    beg - raise a question or point that has not been dealt with; invite an obvious question

Unfortunate, but true.

> It's like the word 'literally' (whose bastardization is both far more egregious and hilarious)

"literally" has been used to mean "figuratively" for hundreds of years, by plenty of famous authors. The idea that "literally" should only mean "actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy" seems to be the actual recent invention.

Mostly a question of euphemism drift (or rhetorical drift, if that's a thing) -- "really" and "very" are former terms that meant "without exaggeration or inaccuracy" but slowly drifted towards a rhetoric use.

Interesting.

(That's another one that tends to mean the opposite)

Wait, was this a burn? Ouch.

Hah, honestly I think I replied to the wrong thing.

The problem is that we need a way to say "actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy" succinctly. Also, to say "I am using an idiom, but non-idiomatically."

"Literally" should be that tool. I understand that a word's meaning is, by definition, what people mean when they say it, but it is frustrating to have this communication tool drift away with nothing to replace it.

As another commenter said, this same thing happened to "very" and "really" in the past. So maybe it's time to let "literally" go and make up a new word for it?

> but it is frustrating to have this communication tool drift away with nothing to replace it.

My point is that it isn't "drifting away"—it has been used as an intensifier for hundreds of years.

What is the point of the word literally then? What information does it convey if not to say that it is actually, without exaggeration?

> What is the point of the word literally then?

I don't think words have a point.

> What information does it convey if not to say that it is actually, without exaggeration?

Sometimes it does convey that. And sometimes it's merely an intensifier. Lots of words are like that.

The "problem" with "begs the question" is that makes literal sense. Then there are people who know that phrase from something and apparently once a phrase is used somewhere it can't be used in any other context to mean anything else.

There is no problem here as long it isn't being applied to the wrong logical fallacy.

A guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head, which begs the question, "why is there a duck on his head?" (be asked.)

"Begging" and "asking for" are commonly used to anthropomorphize situations. "The ball spinning on the goal line was begging to be tapped in." "With John's attitude, he was was just asking to be fired."

Nothing wrong with the phrase at all. It is consistent with other common usages.

Maybe it's the phrase used in the logical fallacy that doesn't make sense.

Yup.

The hweird logical-fallacy use of "begging the question" is a mistranslation.

It goes back to Aristotle, who talked about "τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς", meaning "asking for the first thing". That is: you're debating some proposition X, which in the rhetorical terminology of the time was called "the first thing" (imagine that you're holding an actual debate, and you start by saying: The question before us is whether X), and the logical fallacy is when, in the course of arguing for X, you assume (ask us to accept -- ask for) X, the "first thing".

So far, so good.

So after the age when Serious Thinking was done in Greek came the age when Serious Thinking was done in Latin. Aristotle's term was translated to "petitio principii". The first word means "assuming" in mediaeval Latin but "asking for" in classical Latin. The second word means "first thing", a rather literal translation of the Greek.

So far, still so good.

And then, some time in the 16th century, some genius decided to translate the term into English and (1) render "petitio" as "asking for" ("begging") rather than "assuming", and (2) render "principii" as "question" instead of "first thing". Presumably they did #1 because "asking for" is one meaning of "petitio", even though it's not the one that's relevant here. Presumably they did #2 because in a debate (which, again, was the original context for the term) "the question" means whatever proposition you're debating.

The result of which is the ridiculous term we have now. The common usage of the phrase to mean "raising the question" is a much better thing for "begging the question" to mean. Personally, I mostly avoid using the term at all because some people will think it means "raising the question" and think I'm weird and pedantic if I use it to mean "arguing in a circle", while other people will think it means "arguing in a circle" and think I'm ignorant if I use it to mean "raising the question". (So it's an example of what Fowler called a "skunked" term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term.)

Haha brilliant, thank you for that etymology trace and the Skunked Term phrase! Good stuff.

Also do something on accident (instead of by accident).

And the word softwares (software is correct for the plural form).

I like to be a grammar Nazi as much as the next guy, but honestly I'm over this one.

It seems that the logical fallacy definition of "begs the question" has now become a recursive example of question begging itself. The only reason it means self-referencing argument is because 10% of the population believes it does. I'm half-convinced this was all just some linguist's April Fool's prank gone awry.

The reality is the literal definition of "begs the question" is commonly accepted, well understood, and frankly, makes a hell of lot more sense. I'm fairly certain that it is the only definition for that term that is held by a majority of English speakers. If that doesn't make it the official definition, then what does? There is no English Language Preservation Organization. If most people think that is what it means, then that is what it means.

begs the question has multiple meanings now because we say it does.

You should try a ReMarkable. I love mine for reading and marking PDFs, especially work related and note taking. It's one of the few things I backed as a KickStarter that has come along massively since it first began. The 2nd version looks great also.

Comments below indicate people's shock at the price: $1500.

ReMarkable isn't cheap either: $400

Well, I don't know. A decent tablet goes for $300. I could see myself paying +33% for significantly increased battery life. On mobile devices, the screen eats most of the battery charge, therefore also contributing most to the battery's degredation over years. An e-ink tablet could potentially last much longer.

It's not cheap but for me the added productivity of so many notes and being able to read long pdf documents comfortably makes it well with it.

I have been eying the remarkable. I would literally like to try it, but I am not aware of any German shops carrying it. I am very hesitant to order an expensive gadget I might not like.

As you have one: what is the basis for sharing documents? I would mostly be using it as an ebook reader, how do you upload ebooks, what formats are supported?

They have a 30-day free return period if you don't like it.

It's a Norwegian product AFAIK, and the company officially sells it to EU/EEA/CH markets on their website.

Remarkable is direct-only I believe, but they do have a 30day return policy.

As for the software/sharing, they have desktop (Win, Mac, Linux), Android and iOS apps and their own cloud hosted service for syncing documents, inks, ebooks, etc amongst your devices and the tablet. The apps are a little clunky (due to cross platform widgets) but you can quickly export a PDF of a drawing or drag in an ebook (PDF/ePUB) and it'll auto sync to your device.

P.S. The device itself is quite hacker friendly, it supports SSH over USB out of the box and they've shared their cross-compliation toolchain.

Now you have me interested, what happens when you ssh into it, does it run a shell? Do you know about the programmability and can you give me some pointers?

Yup. I own one and have tested to ssh but not actually done much yet. It runs Linux and a shell. These are a good start:

https://remarkablewiki.com/tech/start https://remarkablewiki.com/tips/start https://github.com/reMarkable

I should add that this is a relatively open platform. It runs Linux, there is an official GitHub org with code.

One problem is the cost of these devices. The unit shown in this article sells for $1500. Another is the slow refresh rate, which is often-times fine for tasks like reading a large set of text (ebooks, entire newspaper sheets, etc), but might not be well suited for touchscreen use where UI elements need to react to user interactions in a timely manner. The project in the OP skips user controls altogether, meaning you can't actually read anything beyond the front page.

eInk is cool, and the technology continues to be developed, but it's still a niche solution applicable to limited use cases due to the slow refresh and high cost.

Well, obviously, this price is extremely high. But the question is: why is it so high? Is there anything in the technology which makes it even more expensive than OLED technology, or is this a problem with the company, which kind of seems to work hard at preventing the technology to enter the mass market and become cheaper?

And of course, I am very aware of the downsides of e-ink. Readers like the kindle are pushing as far as it is possible with respect for interactivity. But for all kind of mostly static displays, it would shine.

Because the volumes are low. It's the same with any technology. High volumes = low cost, and vice-versa. When the manufacturing is geared up to produce enormous volumes and there's a bunch of competitors, the final product cost will be very low. When there's only one manufacturer and it's a niche product and there's very low demand, the cost is very high.

Right, I just wonder why no one tried hard to break that cycle and whenever I read about e-ink technology, I get the impression that the company behind it is not making it easy to create products with their technology.

One suggestion I've seen is patents.

Unfortunately, I think it's killing a whole corner of the market. I'd happily pay $500 for one of these but not $2k. At that price I'd struggle to not use something that has more colours and a higher refresh rate.

> but might not be well suited for touchscreen use where UI elements need to react to user interactions in a timely manner

I feel like my phone often responds to my input a hell of a lot slower than the refresh rate of an e-ink display.

E-ink's contrast ratio is quite poor, typically around 8:1 and with even marketing claims topping out around 12:1. For comparison, a baseline gallery-quality inkjet with good glossy photo paper can easily exceed 200:1, and professional repro methods do better still.

So, emulating newsprint is a good e-ink use case, since newsprint's contrast sucks too. But black and white photos, which depend critically on effective use of contrast for a lot of their effect, will not look good on an e-ink display, any more than they would on a Game Boy.

For the quoted 1500$ for the display I could buy a printer and print the page for quite some time...

A large-format printer, yet. A Pixma Pro 1000 that can do excellent 17x22-inch prints - and color! - only runs about a grand, so you'd even have a bit left over for some good Hahnemuhle photo paper.

While the format is an important point, I don’t understand why one would print a newspaper front page on good paper?

Beats me, but that's not really my point anyway. Displaying photographs was cited as a good use case for an e-ink display, and as a photographer who puts considerable effort into producing high-quality display prints of their work, I felt it worth explaining why that's a terrible use case for e-ink.

(Anyway, why do people frame newspaper front pages? Given the total lack of archival quality in newsprint, I could see scanning and printing to frame in a way that'd hold up better over time.)

I don't think those use-cases are in collision with one another. I'd be happy to take an e-ink display for photographs.

But also buy high-quality prints as well. Even though both will end up on the wall they are totally different use-cases.

Are they? I don't see how. Where's the use in displaying a photograph, at whatever size, as a muddy, contrastless mess?

Family vacation? The LCD picture frames are popular and can be described just like that. Even the kindle grayscale images could be decent as decoration. (I'm guessing e-ink would look best in grayscale, but I haven't seen one in color)

Maybe not the living-room centerpiece, but still.

Even there, much better options exist. For the same money you can get a 55" Samsung Frame with color, excellent contrast, and that also doubles as a quite good TV - it can be the living-room centerpiece.

Much better for what? I'd never use that - absolutely hideous for the use-cases I'd use an e-ink for.

I'd use the one in the article in a heartbeat, much more elegant and no backlight. No it won't display a photograph as good as the Samsung but it will not be cheesy or look out of place (or consume tons of energy) - which the Samsung will if it is positioned anywhere else but in front of and in eye-level of a sofa.

The only thing it is good for is as a TV, which I guess is great if you want a TV.

I'd rather take a chance on the Frame's automatic backlight adjustment to match the ambient light level maybe working, than on e-ink which guarantees poor reproduction.

It's just super odd to me to think about wanting to go to all the trouble of displaying an image at that size and scale, and also being willing to accept it looking as lousy as e-ink's awful contrast will necessarily make it. Sure, it's a lot easier to change the displayed image than it is with a paper print, but what's the benefit of that when they're all going to look equally bad?

Granted I'm a photographer and I want my own work to look good, but it's not as if I had to develop that interest to want whatever I did put on my walls to look good...

The advantage of e-ink is that it blends perfectly with the ambient lighting, without eyestrain or backlight bleed. Low contrast is kind of the point, combined with the ability to change the display remotely/automatically.

What's here under discussion is contrast ratio - not contrast between the image and its surroundings, but contrast between the lightest and darkest tones that can be represented within the image itself. Another term would be "dynamic range", if that helps; "contrast ratio" is how the concept is typically expressed in the context of raster displays, so that's what I've gone with here.

Under either name, it's a major figure of merit for quality of image reproduction, and my point is that e-ink, being worst at it of any raster display technology of which I'm aware, is thus a very poor choice for displaying images if quality of reproduction is a criterion.

I know, and quality of photographic reproduction is not a criterion I would need from an eink display. My goal is subtlety. Honestly in a parallel universe I have probably built the same exact prototypes from the blog. My (defunct) startup was called Nitrogen Logic because technology should be as critical but invisible as the nitrogen in the air.

I am totally fine with an 8:1 contrast ratio if it gives me perfect integration into the ambient light :)

Photography would be displayed elsewhere, in a place that is meant to draw attention. I want eink because it shouldn't grab attention at all.

You could print glossy magazine covers.

Perhaps you could even pay a company to print the entire paper for you and have it delivered to your door every morning.

> For comparison, a baseline gallery-quality inkjet with good glossy photo paper can easily exceed 200:1, and professional repro methods do better still.

That's only for glossy though, right? That comes with glare, which is annoying for reading.

Matte is "only" around 50:1, which still beats e-ink by a lot. Newsprint struggles to approach even that because the inks are formulated to be inexpensive, thus not heavily saturated, so the "black" is really a dark gray, and the paper is cheap pulp that probably couldn't be bleached really white without disintegrating anyway.

But you can read it outside.

Presumably taking it off the wall, first?

I don't claim that e-ink has no use case, only that it's bad at displaying photographs. If you mean to argue otherwise, please do so with respect to statements I've made, rather than to ones I have not.

I was addressing the contrast ratio, which people seem to sort of measure inadequately in sunlight.

There are two comparisons between LCD displays that should properly be referencing S/N ratio instead of contrast.

With a glossy display, whatever is behind you STRONGLY affects your S/N ratio, especially in black.

In sunlight even a very bright LCD is washed out almost to unreadability (though I am surprised how well recent phones still manage to still function)

Chicken and the egg?

You need high volumes to drop the price and you can't get high volumes with high price. The E Ink technology has a lot of downsides compared to OLED and LCD, such as update speed, limited colors,...

We (http://www.visionect.com) have been building E Ink solutions for past decade and we just stoped convincing people that they should use E Ink where they could use LCD or OLED. E Ink is useful only as a niche solution for specific, mostly not consumer (exception being Kindle and Remarkable) products. We've sold a platform for any application and after a while we saw that it only makes sense to focus on specific niches (digital signage, transportation, bus stops) or go for finished product (see our https://getjoan.com).

In the end it is what it is - everybody says they'd use an E Ink display everyday, but almost nobody is prepared to spend the cash when they can use iPads, phones or huge LCD/OLED instead.

E Ink will have it's day in digital signage as they solve the colors as these screens will replace all paper advertising eventually, but untill the you'll see this screens on ebook readers / note takers, on conference rooms and on digital bus stops.

And even E Ink Kindle is a bit niche. It's great for reading flowing text as in most fiction. However, for things with a lot of graphics/photographs a tablet or even a phone tends to be a lot better. To say nothing of all the other things you can do with a tablet. As a result, when I travel, I almost never take my Kindle because a tablet is so much more versatile.

Right. E-ink ist really only for mostly static display. Thats why I think that for proper pdf-reading you would need an e-ink reader which can display the whole page at its original size, so roughly A4 sized. Even the 12.9" iPad Pro is a bit small for that, but at least it can quickly zoom and scroll.

Personally I'm fine with reading PDFs on the 11". I have a 12.9" I bought mostly as an experiment in creating videos. For drawing and so forth the larger screen is nice. But I find it's too big/heavy to read on.

There was the Kindle DX which was 12.6" on the diagonal IIRC. I guess that's still a bit too small though, and the last model of that came out a decade ago.. I'm guessing it didn't sell well because I've never seen anybody using one.

I knew some professors in college that had the DX and that was exactly why they used it. They could download a bunch of newly published papers/references frequently and only have to carry the DX.

You'd see them roaming about the campus reading them. Eventually I think that swapped out for iPads since they could be used for non-paper things.

Well, margins do not need to exist when reading on a tablet (unless for margin notes but these are usually scant). I have an iPad 2019 which I think is 10’3’’ and honestly, math papers (my area) are pretty much equal to the “real thing”.

It should probably not be lost on us that the E-ink display[1] he's using in the prototype costs $1500. That's a lot for what basically amounts to a one color display, and if we ignore all the other features of E-ink, you could replicate this for less cost with other tech.

I recently experienced the Samsung Frame[2] which - to be clear - is NOT an E-ink panel, doesn't have the power savings, etc., but it's larger, cheaper, and has a very believable art mode. I was one of those guys who tried mounting an old flat panel to the wall to display art that I liked before realizing that it just wasn't believable. It was a nice enough effect in a well lit room, but turn the lights down in the slightest, and it's very obviously a television set, and just didn't feel at all arty. On the other hand, the Frame is extremely believable as a framed art print, to the extent that it fooled me the first time I saw one.

I haven't bought one yet, but it's much easier to imagine spending the $1000 for a Frame, mounting it vertically, and hacking out a way to format a newspaper graphic into its art mode than it is for me to imagine spending $1500 on an E-Ink display. Aside from being cheaper, if the project doesn't work out, then I can at least use the Frame for its intended purpose.

[1] - https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-monochrome-epap...

[2] - https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-...

Question about the Samsung Frame that I didn't find answered in reviews: Does the adjusting brightness etc to look natural also work with external signals, or only when showing images in "art mode"?

From my limited exposure, my best guess is that whatever lighting / contrast adjustments it makes in art mode are only enabled for art mode.

I'm not sure what 'looking natural' for a television screen might look like. Naively, if you wanted the television mode to look more like moving pictures, I'd think you'd have to figure out a way to knock down the refresh rate considerably. 15Hz ought to do it. If you're asking me if it just adjusts the television brightness to surrounding lighting conditions, I don't know, but it feels like art mode is doing more than just adjusting brightness (though possibly I'm wrong here and brightness is just much more convincing than I've experienced in the past)

Ah, too bad. I had hoped for something that could display a slideshow from a Raspberry Pi etc, since I'd want the content to update automatically in regular intervals and not rely on cloud services.

IIRC you can add your own 4K images to it via thumb drive and it'll rotate through them without relying on a connection to their upstream art server.

Take this with grains of salt as I don't own one, don't know the interval, and couldn't guarantee that it isn't bricked without an internet connection, though I find that highly unlikely.

I guess for automatic updates one could simulate a USB drive and send remote control commands, but that feels a bit too hacky and disruptive for something where sleekness is the focus. Thanks for your responses!

I own a Frame, and the normal viewing mode does have a very slight brightness adjustment that is automatic, I think I turned that on. It's not as dramatic as the Art Mode setting.

The art mode dimming is very good, it has tricked every single visitor I've had in my living room, they always say nice painting. Then their minds are blown when it's revealed it's a TV. It's very convincing at first glance.

Problem is showing personal images, it does not do as good of a job. I think it uses the same settings as other inputs.

Aww, that's what I feared after the reviews always just raved about the art mode. If it doesn't even work so well for imported images, even worse.

Well, that's one expensive toy expense saved I guess.

Also, my frame at least has some kind of broken internal Wifi.. so using it as a tv with the internal apps is annoying, I have to almost daily factory reset it to get it to reconnect to our (otherwise fine) WiFi and stream stuff... :/

Ah yes I turned off all the "smart" features I could. I don't trust Samsung with anything. I use a Chromecast for streaming needs, it's very reliable.

I would bet the art mode pictures are analyzed somehow to optimize the settings, or the settings are hand-tuned for each picture.

Not applying art mode to arbitrary user pictures removes the risk of them making art mode look bad, when art mode is pretty much the main reason to buy this TV over another.

But they advertise Art Mode as "you can add your own pictures" :/

For $1500 you could hire someone to come over and put a new newspaper into the frame from time to time.

I was thinking the same thing. Or you could get 10-15 annual newspaper subscriptions, delivered to your door/mailbox.

Yes but the refresh rate of newsprint is terrible!

24 hours isn't optimal, but it gets the job done.

That's not a living wage

If someone considers it the best use of their time, they're better off with extra cash than without.

By that logic gig economy apps are good, yet they are heavily criticized and in some cases sued.

Gig economy apps being criticized or even sued is not evidence they are bad.

*I don't personally like them, but no doubt there are workers that like their jobs at doordash or uber--> not everyone doing those jobs is doing them out of desperation.

Well I guess the question is: if desperate people might take the job, and the job is not sustainable for anyone but teenagers and retirees, should the job be allowed to exist seeing as it would not sustain the desperate person?

sorry for the late reply,

my answer might reveal a philosophical difference between our points of view, but I'd ask: would the desperate person be better with a job that covers some of their expenses or no job that coverers none of their expenses? I believe in having a social safety net of some kind (i really like negative income tax), but how useful is it for the government to ban jobs people would otherwise work?

the argument could be made that uber could just be forced to pay a living wage, instead of banning their jobs- but the difference is small. uber is already losing money- i would say that forcing them to pay a "living wage" just hastens their collapse and bankruptcy, so we're back to arguing if these jobs are better existing or not existing.

It's not a job, it's a gig. Don't go getting DoorDash in trouble. They might have to start treating their employees as employees!

Let's say it takes someone 30 minutes in total to drive to your house, replace it, and drive back to their own house.

If they did it every day, that's 15 hours in a month, or 182.5 hours in a year.

If you paid that person $1500 for the year, that's $8.22 per hour, above federal minimum wage.

The minimum wage is far lower than a living wage, even in low-COL areas.

Y'all need hobbies

I suggest they put a newspaper on someone's wall.

Yeah but it doesn’t take 30 minutes, more like 5 minutes if a lot of people were using this service. Or 2 minutes if you simply paid the paper boy to do it!

That's not a full time job.

If I had a newspaper delivered to my door I'm not paying a living wage for the delivery person either. How is this any different?

That reminds me of the newspaper walls they have (or had?) in China. Basically, it’s a place outside where the newspaper is pinned up so people can come by and read it while standing, kind of like a bulletin board (probably was like this everywhere before newspapers became cheap).

That was how government announcements were published for centuries. You ¿still? see that at police offices, with “Wanted” posters.

Sure, we also have bulletin boards, we just don't pin entire newspapers to them (anymore?).

This is sort of a thing in Portugal. They display all the papers on a board and you can (and people do) read the front pages, and then you can decide if you want to buy one to read the rest.

Yep, in Russia too, at least 20 years ago.

This used to be very common in Italy, particularly near community centres, libraries, and political-party locations (in the latter case, of course, it was restricted to specific newspapers). It took a lot of maintenance (vandalism, weather, etc) and slowly disappeared with the multiplication of media channels. Still, it was a very low-tech/high-democracy way to disseminate information. You can still read newspapers for free in libraries and cafes, but obviously it’s not the same (you cannot discuss with others at a library, and cafes will typically stick to sports and local news to avoid alienating anyone).

How about an inkjet plotter and a big spool of paper... later revisions might dabble with erasable ink and surface combinations. If it is monochromatic, it might even be able to collect and recycle the ink.

Actually the display he used was a color eInk display but he chose to use it in greyscale mode as an aesthetic decision.

> E Ink’s 31.2-inch monochrome display fit the bill. The 31.2-inch color display gives you colors, but not at any satisfying resolution or contrast ratio. I

$1500 for the display, plus a $500 board to drive it, plus...

I really like it, but not that much!

Back around maybe 1988-9 I worked with a company that built the first big screen video card for the Mac 2. They went to Sony and said "we want to buy 15,000 monitors", they were humorously heavy 19 inch 1kx768 monitors, cost something like $5-10k.

Sony laughed at us, we'd never sell that many, besides (unlike TVs) they essentially made them by hand on a minimalist assembly line - we sold 25k that year.

It's the same chicken and egg thing there's not a lot of incentive to optimise the production costs until the volumes spike and that wont happen until the prices drop

Sounds like a valid use for burning VC. Rather than subsidize bicycle sharing or cheap car rides, VC could bootstrap scaled production lines for new risky tech.

China has basically sorted the scaling of production lines. A large part of the VC money for bicycle sharing should be capex in a large number of bicycles, but that's a lot cheaper than it used to be due to the available manufacturing capability.

That's true for general electronic and mechanical stuff and obviously not true for everything. Semiconductor, batteries etc. are much more specialised.

The Place and Play looks very much like what I am looking for, but indeed, the prices are not exactly consumer-level.

I really wonder, whether there would not be more consumer interest in these devices, if there were actual offerings. What about offering the 13" display in a plastic housing with a software more crafted to the consumer/hobbyist? Perhaps powered and controlled by USB-C or optimized for the Raspberry Pi. How low could the prices go, especially with larger volumes?

Of course, it could be just me, and there is not much interest in the wider audience.

For me the ideal size would be like a 10 or 11" device I could use for text-based things. (Think Emacs-ish only type of device, or something)....super light weight, long battery life.

The components cost too much.

Perhaps if this was some open source play where everybody did everything for free. We tried different pricing, different positioning and we could not breakthrough into large volumes with a platform play. Everybody in the end tries to haggle you on the price / cut you out and unless you have Google-deep pockets you can't afford to lose money for a couple years to launch this wide.

I'd say that it's pretty much impossible to do a platform play in hardware if you're a startup. Even when talking about IOT, which is arguably the simplest hardware I don't remember of a platform play that went really well. Most of them are meh or random successes like the ESP WiFI (again not started by a small startup, but still could be argued that is a proper hacker platform).

If you want to play with some of our solutions, hit me up at luka dot birsa [at] visionect dot com and I'll see what I can do.

You don't have to convince me to use eink, you just have to convince me it is worth the price.

For example, I've been dying for one of these:

https://www.padformusician.com/en/

Imagine having my entire music library in an eink tablet. Then, when I go to my parents' house I can play any of my music on their piano.

But I'm not willing to spend $900+. I'd be willing to spend up to $200

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. An e-ink tablet needs the same SoC, battery, metal case, and software engineering that an LCD tablet needs. So if an e-ink display cost the same as an LCD, the tablet would cost the same. But because of the limitations of the display technology, the device would do less than the equivalent tablet. You can't play games on it. You can't watch Netflix on it. Browsing the web would be a chore that nobody would do except in an emergency.

For that reason, the devices don't exist.

Something like a Kindle Paperwhite works, especially for people who read a lot of fiction. It's small, light, easy to read outside, and fairly cheap.But upsize it and now you have a very limited function tablet.

OK, it works for reading PDFs of things like scientific papers (which I understand is something people like the Remarkable tablet for). And it's easier to read outside. (Might be a bit cheaper too because you don't need as powerful a processor.) But you're mostly trading off a pretty general purpose device--which is getting even more so--for something that has a really narrow set of use cases. And isn't really as good as the smaller models for just reading text.

Not quite the same; battery needs are a fraction even with front lighting, CPU can be slower due to lower display refresh rate, displays are less fragile so you can have a less robust case, etc. Unfortunately, this doesn't overcome the higher display cost. Perhaps an e-ink feature phone would have a high enough volume to do so.

The Hisense A5 e-ink phone is available now for around $200and runs on Android 9. https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/hisense-a5-e-ink-smartp...

I may have missed it but I can't see any mention of the battery life - surely that's one huge aspect.

I've ended up using an iPad Pro for this. It's a little more expensive but multi-function so I use it for more than music.

I've been eyeing a Remarkable tablet for similar use. I'm an (avocational) organist and choral singer, and would love to have my entire library accessible at all times. The Remarkable has a smaller screen (10.3") than the PadMu (13"), but it is somewhat cheaper.

I made the plunge a few years ago to get a gvido device, which is similar. The big problem is the refresh rate on the device. It is incredibly slow to flip pages, which is a big problem when you're playing. I spent $1500, and the device is basically useless because it's so slow. And the japanese based company doesn't take open box returns, so now I'm stuck with it.

If the device could flip pages quickly, it would be an amazing device. It just can't.

just a heads up, the page you linked seems to hijack the scroll bar on safari and is generally unusable (clicks not working, etc). it appears to be your bundle.js coming from assets.ubembed.com that is causing all sorts of issues.

might be something to look at.

I would pay $2 - $5k for a poster sized, high-dpi black and white E Ink display that had wifi and a bunch of readily available art. Especially if it could be battery powered so I could mount it on brick wall. The technology and novelty is incredibly cool.

Eink cost comes mostly from lockin by Eink, Epson and few other parties.

The technology is ridiculously low tech by the industry standards in comparison to any tft screen

Could you sell a home Joan? We have those at work and I find myself wanting that form factor with WiFi, but instead of scheduling I’d put my own content on there.

They sell this now! https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home

I've been looking for a replacement for my smartphone, mainly because I don't want to be addicted to apps anymore, but also because I'm tired of charging it every 1/2 days even though I barely use it.

I stumbled upon the Lightphone II (https://www.thelightphone.com/), a gorgeous slab-looking phone, with an eink display, and I realized this was the way for me: battery life for days/weeks, minimal functionality, good looks.... unfortunately the price (350$) is way too high at the moment, I can't afford to put that much money into something that ultimately isn't that important.

I wish technology would improve though, because I'd really love to have a simple phone like that. No need for Android, only something like KaiOS would be more than enough.

Because the screen costs $1500 and has the benefit of lower power consumption.

Problem is that a 24 inch monitor takes about $15 to run 24/7 for a full year. You can run that for 50 years and still have a set-up that's hundreds of dollars cheaper with better contrast, can show colour, can show moving images etc.

And if you put a motion/use sensor on it and connect it to a smart home setup, the energy use differences (e.g. reading the paper while brushing teeth) become minimal. We're talking about pennies per year.

They're interesting as part of experimental art pieces, but as a large-scale consumer product very much unproven for these usecases.

Yeah E-ink is really dropping the ball. You could write for days a moralistic mannifesto touching:

- blue LCD light (facebook's blue!), mass sleep deprivation - eyeball markets, surveillance capitalism, end of independent thought - power consumption, global warming

Conclusion, e-ink is the difference between UBI utopia and cyberpunk distopia!

C'mon, chronically anxious Brooklyn ad industry employees, this shit is easy.

sct 3500.

Same question here -- I bought a kindle DX when it first came out and was surprised that the line petered out and never continued to the higher contrast light-up models. What a shame.

I've been seeing Eink displays get more and more commercial use over the last few years. A lot of the grocery/department stores have replaced printed out paper prices on the shelves with Eink ones. The modules are pretty cool too, it looks like the display is updated via NFC/RFID and the display itself doesn't have any sort of power source. It gets electricity wirelessly whenever it needs to be updated.

Edit: actually most of the eink price tags use a button cell battery, oops

> The newspaper is a great implemantation of this, but I also

> would like to have a large e-ink display for displaying b/w

> photographs.

I'm surprised that newspapers haven't picked up on this already, they could play the "we're going green" card, cut their own overheads and lock people into a platform.

Hell, they could even elbow their way into much larger markets, such as books, note taking, pictures, emails, document signing, etc.

Why the Amazon Kindle doesn't come with a newspaper is beyond me - it seems like it would be an absolutely killer feature for getting people to use their kindles every day. Doesn't Jeff Bezos own some newspaper already anyway?

Along a different direction than larger displays: there was a popular post recently about an e-Ink display that doesn't require batteries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604617 (alternative link to the product: https://www.seeedstudio.com/7-5inch-Passive-NFC-Powered-e-Pa...).

I spent the better part of last night comparing e-readers. I really want something that is large enough to comfortably read a magazine (PDF), but everything seems to be 7" or so.

I'm with you. I can't wait until we have a proper A4 / letter sized e-reader -- or better yet 2x A5 that could close.

I haven't kept tabs on the e-ink scene outside of a little digging twice a year. Outside of refresh rates, it doesn't seem like a lot has changed. The price is still up there and the screens are still roughly half of what they should be.

I fell in love with the general idea of e-ink with the Pebble watches (Sharp's Memory LCD.) Having a device that just works and doesn't require frequent charging is such a pleasure.

What I really don't understand is why e-ink hasn't consumed the mobile market (like the Yotaphone.)

edit: proper paper sizing

Patents. I can't find a source for this on the top of my head now, but "E-ink" is both a trademark and patented, strongly so. (It's not only a technology, it's the name of the company too, so you can't say "e-ink" without treading on their trademark. And they want you to say "E ink" and not "E-ink", apparently.)

Whereas there is a multitude of color display technologies with lots of prior art and overlap that would make patent disputes difficult, e-ink is so "special" in the way it works that it's easier for them to aggressively defend their patent, which means they take a huge skim off the top of anything that's produced. So there's lots of competition and innovation in the space of LCD and LED technology, because both those technologies are out of patent protection, but E-ink is a wasteland right now.

I think it's why it's so niche.

I hope that once color eInk displays starts to show up, advertisers will switch to it instead of printing large posters and drive the mass manufacturing costs down.

I can't wait to see a color eReader and see magazines and comic books in all their glory.

That display is $1.5k ea, and comes with an NDA mostly forbidding you to even think about it, much less think about the possibility of letting the thought of permitting your mouth talk about it cross your mind.

This sort of thing is pretty consistent with all these devices. I guess the manufacturers only want to sell to outfits like Amazon or Google and want to make damn sure that everyone else is left out.

I'm convinced that this is a significant factor in the relative narrowness of success, or out right lack, of the technology.

I don't understand it either, a decent profit on a vast number of units versus a higher profit on a smaller number is a classic trade off.

I guess they make enough from ebook readers they don't want to make them more widely available.

I'm not sure that's the trade-off. My experience is that it's hard to predict where new technologies will be used (see history of radio and telephone).

With something like eInk, getting it into the hands of engineers building wonky prototypes would allow rapid exploration of a lot of new markets.

But yeah, many business leaders are insecure and don't understand IP.

Selling to one big company is a way better deal for most businesses if you can swing it. You have ONE customer to deal with, instead of thousands or millions, they will (likely) give you a ton of cash up front as you ramp up your production (payment for the rest on delivery), and you only have to work out how to ship them to one location, instead of either setting up a storefront or finding a distributor. You have easy-to-forecast revenue and you can stay in your niche as a component manufacturer instead of becoming a consumer goods product company.

> You have ONE customer to deal with

That has its downsides. For one thing, they own you. For another, if their plans shift, you are out of business.

I wonder, why is there an NDA on the software using their code? Why would they want to hide their API, considering anyone nefarious would just buy the thing anyway ($1,5k isn’t a huge barrier to entry) and completely disregard the NDA anyway?

I think it's insecure business leaders.

They are worried a competitor might pop up and outcompete them, and they hope that lumbering their employees, their suppliers, and their customers with NDA's will prevent anyone from becoming that competitor.

I'm not sure they realise how much the NDA's scare off good employees, suppliers, and customers, leaving them unable to make quick progress, and in turn making them ripe for someone to outcompete.

And if someone does come along to compete with them, they might use patent lawfare to drive them out of business.

I'm sure the NDA also says you're not supposed to talk about the NDA! We're all in trouble now.

We didn't sign it.

That probably doesn't matter to the people pushing the NDA. Why should they care about the realities of contract law, when they can just make up lies and get people to believe them under threat of lawsuit?

It's just like how so many car dealerships will tell you that getting your car serviced anywhere else will "void your warranty" even though that's blatantly illegal.

Not signing a contract and signing a contract of dubious legal value are two different things. In the second case you need to argue the legality, in the first case there is nothing to argue about.

I didn't see the NDA, but it has this forbidding message (which I think the author of the article ignored):

"(II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED."

I'm pretty sure this is not lawful so you can't be sued if you lied in the first place.

Why would it not be lawful?

Ask the other way around: Why would this be lawful?

If you sell something you give up any rights on the item sold. You can not any longer demand what the object should be used for, nor by whom it should be used.

You can still consider it a breach of the contract.

Sure, but would that even hold up in court? You can put anything in a contract, that doesn't make it enforceable.

As nkrisc already pointed out, just because you put something in a contract it doesn't mean it's enforceable, or lawful.

See, if it's not lawful in the first place, you can't "breach" it.

IANAL, but I had enough law during my studies to know where this will lead. Maybe you can do these kind of shenanigans in the US of A, but I'm confident this kind of contract clauses are not possible in Europe.

I am sure the author put "Google X" in the "company" line of the order form and they didn't ask any further questions. (Or if they did, "it's confidential", and they probably sent him a couple extras for free.)

It's possible they have agreements with whomever they're supplying that they won't compete by selling direct to consumers.

...How dare you even consider making something cool that others might want, and result in further sales! For Shame!

(Truly insane position of the company - they ought to hire this person and make this a product one can buy.)

Something like this would probably be a step back towards sanity (vs my current habit of consuming news and social media from my iPad, which generally makes me unhappy, but darn it's addictive). Just the headlines and leads. If I want more, I can check the full website later.

If it was $300 instead of $1500+, I'd be all in. Heck, a larger format Kindle might work too. The current book reader is just too small for newspaper consumption.

I really don't get, why Amazon doesn't put more resources in the Kindle universe. They should have a large volume and quite a market position. Also, they don't lack the finances to push products. A larger Kindle would be an instant buy for me. I have been contemplating the Oasis just because it adds an inch of display and with the next refresh I will probably bite. But why not 8 or 10 inch devices? Or full A4 size.

Also, it would be great, if they made it easy to connect your Kindle to e.g. a Raspberry Pi and use it as a touchscreen display. I might pick up a couple of paperwhites, if that were possible.

My theory is that since the settlement with Hachette, they don't see any way to make money in the space. E-books are ridiculously over-priced at the moment, and Amazon is not allowed to discount, so it makes it difficult to build up the kinds of volume Amazon needs to really push the market. Their direct publishing arm has lost a lot of momentum as publishers have really stepped up their game in acquiring authors because of the influx of cash they get through this system.

As a side note, the Oasis is for me the pinnacle so far of the Kindle family -- the physical buttons and the asymmetric design make in an excellent device. It suffers from some usability in the touch screen, and the shopping experience is super shitty, but the device itself when you're reading a book is excellent.

Amazon with their devices tends to push their own content, rather than the Apple model of having "apps" -- if Amazon would just make their own content second-class (by providing an API and an "amazon reader app" for the device, and allowing other bookstores and reader apps) then it would really be quite phenomenal.

Seems like a reasonable conjecture.

If this is the case, I wish they'd give in and support ePub and make side-loading a bit easier so that books purchased elsewhere could be added to your Kindle.

I'd love an ultimate-eInk-reader device that supported everything from everywhere.

(Yes, I have Calibre. It's way too tedious for most people.)

You use commas, quite strangely.

Into random places to put, commas I quite like!

You can pry my Kindle DX from my cold, dead hands!

Go for an Onyx Nova Pro. Runs on Android, has a large screen (perfect for PDFs) and ability to take notes with a stylus directly on the text.

The world would have looked differently if the Mirasol technology ever took of. It was a large e-ink that could do color and had a refresh rate good enough for video. Most impressively, it could have been produced at existing display plants with some modifications. Unfortunately, the MEMS technology was close but no quite there as the displays degraded. Beautiful displays however, extremely energy proficient, and absolutely splendid in daylight. A bit dull, but very comfortable indoors.

This is awesome!

However as the discussion from earlier today shows (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827833), it is still very expensive.

The display used in this article costs about $1500 (https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-monochrome-epap...). Which is a bit too high for me to want to make something similar for myself.

Smaller e-ink displays are astronomically cheaper--I wonder if connecting several of them and then rastering the pdf would look much different?

The joins would have to very seamless. The visual presentation is the whole point of this thing, so you wouldn't want to ruin that.

These guys make it seem nice: https://www.visionect.com/blog/tiling-eink-displays/. It would probably be a pain to set up, though.

What a great idea, it's too bad the display costs $1,500 but I suppose that is partially because it includes a Linux controller.

One thing I also learned is that you can download a PDF of the New York Times front page every day!

It does not include the controller, that's another 500 bucks. Round numbers at eInk.

Do other newspapers publish scans of their print editions? From the article, nytimes:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/10/nytfrontpage/scan...

Pretty much all newspapers are archived in libraries around the world (big national libraries in western countries are usually obligated to archive them). If your specific newspaper or front page wasn’t available on the internet, I suspect a nearby library has a high resolution microfilm copy of it that could be digitised.

Wow, I haven't looked at a print edition in years, but wow I can't believe it's now up to $3 to buy a newspaper? Way more than I remember...

The German Süddeutsche Zeitung allows subscribers to download the full PDFs.

http://sz.de

During the pandemic, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is making the electronic version of their paper available (downloadable as a PDF) free of charge.

https://epaper.ajc.com

Newseum appears to still have the daily front page of a ton of newspapers. (A bit surprised since they closed their physical building)

https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/

That’s awesome, I always read my newspaper like that, hanging it in a wall.

And pretty soon it will be ads inside your house on your walls to calm you down.

I believe this was how it used to be before the invention of the printing press [1]

> Royal pronouncements typically used a written document posted on the drawbridge, castle door or main bridge into the village, but residents needed the crier to announce the information for those who were unable to read.

[1] https://classroom.synonym.com/did-people-communicate-before-...

True, that’s old school style! Come to think of it, I think they used to put up the all the pages of the latest editions of newspapers on public billboards not too long ago, and they were still doing that when I lived in St Petersburg (Russia, not Florida) 20 years ago. People would stay and read on the way to the metro, pretty nice!

I was gonna say...unless it's the wall across from my toilet, I'm not sure it would be functionally compatible with me.

Cringeworthy statement from the manufacturer:

(I) THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND (II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

It is not quite uncommon to make evaluation kits only available to commercial customers as they come in a very bare form, lacking any safety notes and so on.

But in the end points to what I think is wrong with e-ink: there are no offerings for hobbyists, which could help a lot to create markets. Why not have at least some displays sold for the Raspberry Pi crowd?

Yeah, but it does seem like this could be a retail (via online sales) product. I don't really see many e-ink commercially deployed around me, and I'm in the bay area. I think the company(ies) controlling this tech ought to try to do anything to make their products more accessible/used.

I agree. It really looks to me as if there is not enough availability of this technology for hobbyists and startups - many startups started from some hobby tinkering with a technology. The big industry doesn't seem to be very interested, so one would need startups to bring more applications to the market.

I am still waiting for someone to introduce a Kindle-style device specifically designed for comic books. I am shocked that Comixology or Amazon have not done this yet. Using iPads and other tablets is not a good solution. These devices are too heavy, the consume too much energy, they are distracting with all the apps, notifications, etc.

Especially manga since it's mostly black and white! I am shocked that not even a Japanese company has even given it a try

I used to read manga on an OLED tablet and it was wonderful with the true blacks. I've tried reading it on my Kindle and it's overall quite pleasant as well, but really makes you wish the display was bigger.

There are "manga editions" of Kindle[0] and Kobo [1]

Basically just their normal version with more storage, though.

[0]https://www.engadget.com/2016-11-12-amazon-kindle-paperwhite...

[1]https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/kobo-aura-on...

> 1500$ display

> (I) THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND (II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

> 500$ driver board with the same terms

> E Ink’s NDA prevents me from sharing the source code

It amazes me every single time I think about it: Why is this company working so hard to keep their products away from the public?

Additionally, how did they convince them they're not a consumer?

My mode of acquiring e-ink displays is looking for e-reader replacement parts and data sheets online. Never interacting with the e-ink company isn't only easier (please stop screaming at me that I suck if I'm a consumer, thanks), but a lot cheaper. Haven't found a knock-off for the 31" screen yet, unfortunately, that would be quite cool.

> Additionally, how did they convince them they're not a consumer?

By being a very wealthy google product manager ?

For $1500 you can buy a 55" 4K OLED screen.

https://www.amazon.com/LG-OLED55C9PUA-Alexa-Built-Ultra/dp/B...

That is why I am wondering how low the prices of a 31 inch e-ink screen could come down, if only produced in reasonably high volume.

But that's not at all a good fit for what he's doing with this.

All that beautiful design work and it still has a cord hanging off of it?

A bit of drywall and electrical work would hide the cord completely; but I understand if that isn't possible in an apartment.

Reading all the negativity here reminds me of the iPod reception back in 2001! This is prescient y’all. This is the technology future I want, not that dystopian blade runner world!

Except that eInk has been around for decades without much breakthrough you'd see in even LCD/OLED technologies. This cannot be easily explained off as lack of R&D investment. IMHO the scalability is the biggest hurdle. That, and the lack of even basic coloring, let alone full CMYK.

It's not even color. A letter or a4 sized tablet is out of the price range most people. Especially grad students or recent PhDs who'd have a huge use for it.

The negativity here is rooted in disappointment from lack of progress and high pricing, not skepticism of the future.

Most of us have been dreaming of mounting an affordable A3-sized e-ink display on our walls.

I used a Motorola F3 in 2006 and got my first Kindle in 2008. Except seeing small e-ink screens in supermarkets I haven't seen any other mainstream e-ink products or solutions. It's a shame the tech is stagnating.

"That looks awesome!" * Looks at website * "$1,500!"

I'm really looking forward to this price point coming down.

EEVblog was talking about an interesting effect where LCDs can potentially become a cheaper alternative to "e-paper" [1]. An LCD panel of similar size is significantly cheaper due to products such as laptops, monitors, TVs, etc.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldolTAeXs_w

They can take the daily screenshots from my side project [1] and rotate them on their very cool screen.

Or they can take the high-fidelity pdfs from Newseum [2] and rotate them.

[1] - https://newshots.simplecto.com -- Daily screenshots of hundreds of publications

[2] - https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/

If you seek calm, a newspaper on your wall isn’t going to deliver it.

It could show headlines from peacetime slow news days from the past.

I can't read the article since I don't own a Medium account. Why does the author need me to sign in?

Does medium randomly chooses who should login ? Because I didn't get a login prompt.

It depends on how many articles you've read this month...

Don’t store medium cookies, that works.

Delete your medium cookies, should work then.

Open it in Incognito mode.

I don’t think it’s the author. I think it’s medium itself which sometimes forces that login popup. I get it too but I get rid of it by going to incognito.

Thanks for the tip. I think some responsibility lies on the author as he chose which platform to publish with.

My policy is to close the window, be it Medium, NYTimes, etc

Plenty of free access websites to cover my needs without them. Why should I jump through hoops if they don't want to share publicly?

Would you rather be advertised to and spied on (pretty sure they track you regardless of whether you're a paying customer though)?

Personally I'd rather pay for quality content than this devolution into everything is clickbait.

No, you can't read the article because you never found the close button on the medium pop-up.

Try again

This looks like a very interesting piece and project. I'd love to read it. But, it's on medium and without an paid account i cannot access it. And at this point, shelling 50 bucks for medium doesn't seem the smart thing to do... This applies to any article on medium posted on HN.

I read medium articles all the time and I've never once been asked to login, much less pay.

Usually I manage to read medium articles fine, but today I encounter:

> The page isn’t redirecting properly

> An error occurred during a connection to onezero.medium.com.

> This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.

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Give me the same but in a form of a thin laptop. I would use it to code/browse HN/Gopherspace and to read media/play music. Some gaming with Nethack/frotz would be acceptable, too.

It's a great idea, although kind of pricey, like most E-Ink stuff. (E-Ink was supposed to be cheap, but that didn't work out.) You could probably sell some of these to executive offices.

I love my Kindle's e-ink display for reading books and news articles. I simply cannot enjoy consuming this content as much with any other medium. But not only do I enjoy to read, but I also enjoy to write as well. I would love to have an e-ink monitor where I can type away my thoughts on my mechanical keyboard in a distraction free interface. I am surprised something like this doesn't exist. I would be more inclined to write more if it did.

At this point OLED 4K screens of the same dimensions are cheaper than e-ink. I really hope the the prices come down because these are just so awesome.

A slight tit bit here, I don’t think Paper is a great name for this great looking product. How are people supposed to find it easily online?

It's not a product. It's a thing he made for himself.

I was thinking of getting a large E Ink display and whenever I would have a guest the cameras in the house could capture their face and use a GAN or some model to change to create an image using their face and update the display just for a few seconds to spook guests. I studied E Ink displays and the low contrast ratio and enormous costs flushed my prank in a drain.

I like e-ink but I don't really get this. Who are they trying to sell this to? I'm assuming they're targeting businesses that want updatable informational displays because I can't imagine any person that would prefer standing in front of a wall in their home to read the newspaper instead of using a handheld device on their couch.

Great. But I don't want a f. Newspaper on my f. wall, I want a working, decent priced eInk screen for my computer.

Check out onyx boox offerings. They have an 11inch tablet that works as e-reader, and also as external HDMI (with HDMI port in the tablet) screen that can be connected to any device.

the Technology Connections yt channel has an experience report about the Onyx Boox Max 2 tablet (13.3 inch):

https://youtu.be/7NfX0vlCa4k

tldw: it's not great for non-ereader tasks. the display is fine, but the tablet is hampered by slow hardware and bugs in its customized Android. using normal apps is challenging even with the compat tricks the OS gives you (e.g. disabling animations, "high contrast")

he mentions that Onyx also offers a non-tablet e-ink monitor, maybe that's better?

What would be non-e-reader tasks that I would want to have on an e-ink monitor? I have used mine to read books in all possible formats (including non-e-ink-aware android apps, with compat tricks), annotate, browse the web. All of that with great experience. What other things does one realistically wish to do on any e-ink display? I saw the video, but my reaction was perfectly summed up by one of the comments:

    "What? It has terrible input lag? The framerate is like 
    5hz?! It's only in black and white??!
    Man, my plans to make this my main 144hz HDR gaming 
    monitor have been crushed."

just, y'know, computing! sure i know i won't be watching videos, but anything else you'd do on a normal computer. because i like e-ink screens :)

i don't think the refresh rate comment is fair - he mentioned the lag when he demo'd writing in Google Docs, and just said you get used to it. but there's a difference between the screen being slow and the device being slow, no?

Insanely cool.

E-ink is just one of those technologies that ought to be so much further along, but I've always gotten the gut feeling that the company that controls this tech is just so out of touch.

Reading how the software can't be shared... I shouldn't have been surprised.

This guy thought about every aspect of the UX except the fact that reading a newspaper from the wall is very bad ergonomically because the reading-height is most often not at eye-height because of the large size of the display!

would be cool with one that just shows a fresh copy of the times on a wall everyday but picks one for the current day from random ones in the past. or maybe make it fun where it picks one from the past with similar headlines.

Bonus points if you add a webcam that face scans the person who is standing in front of them, matches the face with the numerous profiles built from people (some combination of Facebook + Twitter + GitHub would probably find most people), get their birthday and show the frontpage from when they were born.

I am not sure if this is a reference to telescreen from 1984 or not.

Kind of but the vital difference that the entities holding the data are for-profit companies with no oversight instead of governments with no oversight.

Or if they were ever in the paper..

I was thinking the exact same thing. Or better yet, if you touch the screen, it changes to show a random front-page from that "day in history".

The only place that sticks pages from today's newspaper on the wall is your local bookmaker, showing the Racing Post data for the 2:10 race at Newmarket.

...but now you too can recreate the charm of your local bookie at home :-)

Or your local pub toilet.

EDIT: snarky joke, I actually rather like the wall thing that Max Braun created.

The unfortunate thing is the display is only 4 bit. At 16 bit I could see using it to display b&w prints. The dpi is a little low but is ok for viewing at distances greater than about 6 feet.

While I love the clarity from of the technology, the ergonomics of reading while standing isn’t great, let alone contortions I used to go they on the Tube to do it.

I am looking forward to having an e-ink monitor that I can write on (in the sense of using a word processor and looking at it through an eink monitor).

Seen this? You can take it outside!

https://getfreewrite.com/products/freewrite-traveler

2560x1440 at 31" is 95 ppi, in case you wondering.

Anyone know what the thickness of the sheet is?

If these were as cheap and thin as real paper what would the best application of this technology be?

And here I am, wishing for a, for lack of a better term, binder of E-Ink sheets which would display what I currently working on.

I wish for a baby monitor made out of an e-ink display. Would love to have a non emitting screen on for that. Maybe someday...

Why there's no JS framework good at shaping text into columns and automatically flowing text around images? I understand it's not exactly trivial, but aren't the benefits obvious? It's so much more pleasant to read. Instead, we get designers praising "gorgeous" designs with a single narrow column, big fonts, etc. Why are designers missing the big picture?

I think we call that CSS.

Then why isn't CSS used everywhere for that effect?

I want an e ink display closely coupled to my desktop that I can use almost like a printer.

There are a variety of tools that allow you to print almost instantaneously to a reMarkable Tablet.

This screen comes with a 60 days warranty? Is that even possible for an electronic device?

jeez, I submitted this 44 days ago and got no traction, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22420685

oh well! It's a cool project!

What does get traction, how, and why is a big mystery to me. I’ve experienced the same.

Wowza. Put this out there fully and take my money.

I realize this might be a joke but is that even possible to do considering the eink display they used has a NDA on it and they couldn’t even discuss the code? Also the $1500 price tag on top of the NDA was absolutely shocking to me.

Yeh having read a bit more detail on their site you might be right. I think there is nothing more frustrating then companies that make it hard for you to give them your money.

My guess is that these are effectively handmade prototype units, made almost at/below cost, to allow companies to experiment with limited runs and determine business viability, which would leave the possibility of large orders/contracts, whereas consumers are much less predictable and reliable.

Can anyone offer an LCD alternative?

So, yesterday post asking about a e-ink screen was a post to get people curious about it so you can click on this story clever

Such a good project. Reminds me of some of the projects people hacked using our solutions - for example this Digital Picture frame that is displaying the latest tweet from Donald Trump: https://www.visionect.com/blog/sign-of-the-times/.

That’s a $1500 non interactive single image viewer... why not just mount an iPad Pro?

eye roll

Simply because of the e-ink screen

Because an iPad pro isn't 31".

I've read things on walls before, mostly at museums. It's not ergonomic.

The photo in the article looks cool, showing a full page of the New York Times in tiny dense font on a huge screen. But is anyone really going to want to read a paper in that format by standing next to a wall for an hour while squatting to various heights to allow their head to be level with the text they are reading?

New York Times redefines the paywall. How do I enter my credit card number or does it support tap payment?

Display is $1500, controller $500, software under NDA and you can't buy it as a mere mortal. It probably takes over a minute to update the display, considering those 3-color waveshare 10" ones take 15 seconds.

Honestly, this is crap in every way.

there's another way to look at this project... a fellow human wanted to make something that does not exist in this world. they believed in their project enough to invest their money, time, and expertise. after tackling countless technical details, they succeeded by their own measure!

this project never was intended to be a consumer product. Judging it by that standard misses the point.

this is one specific engineer's equivalent to training for and then running a marathon.

this is a human with a highly skilled and devoted engineering practice. just like a runner crossing the finish line, that is what this article is about.

and personally, I'll gladly cheer Max on.

Absolutely agreed. It's a gorgeous piece of tech, or art, or really some blend of the two. I want to see more of these projects in the world, not less.

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